Tags
by razztaztic
Summary: A collection of episode tags for the TV show "Justified." Rated T to give myself a bit of wiggle room for language and content.
1. The New Guy

**_This is the first in what I hope will be a series of tags for each episode of _Justified,_ starting with Season 1, Episode 1. Up til now I've mostly written fanfic for the TV show _Bones_, so pardon my dust as I play around a bit with these tags. I have an idea for a multi-chap but I want to make sure I get the right "voice" for _Justified _fanfic before I start it. _**

**_Thanks for reading!_**

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_The more things change, the more shit stays the same._

One step into the airport in Louisville, Kentucky and everything Raylan had spent the last twenty years trying to put behind him came rushing back. Gone were the pasty complexions of tourists just arriving in Miami, along with the peeling sunburns of people heading home while the preponderance of casually mismatched vacation clothes and bare feet stuck into sandals had become a rush of business suits and blue jeans crowded together into a terminal less than half the size of Miami International. The sounds were different, too, as the heavy Southern drawl of Kentucky replaced the Cuban flavor of the accents he'd left behind.

More than one interested gaze followed the buff-colored Stetson as Raylan approached the Hertz counter but he ignored them all. Disgruntled and not bothering to hide it, he pulled out his wallet and removed the driver's license and credit card the clerk requested. He was back in Kentucky, a place he thought he had left for good.

_Dammit. _

_._

_._

He didn't need the rental car's on-board GPS to find the courthouse in Lexington so it was a short 90 minutes later that found him pushing open the glass-fronted doors to the US Marshal's suite. As Art stepped out of his office smiling, hand outstretched in welcome, Tim Gutterson looked on with interest.

"New guy?" He glanced at Rachel.

"Raylan Givens," she answered without taking her attention from the paperwork she was filling out. "He's coming from the Miami office."

Tim pushed back in his chair, his eyes on the two men in Art's office. "He get tired of looking at women in bikinis?"

"Word is," Rachel punched the stapler through the forms, "coming here wasn't his choice. Had himself an old-fashioned _High Noon_ kind of shoot-out in public and got sent here as punishment."

Tim gave one bark of skeptical laughter as Raylan and Art stepped into the main room. "Well, this ought to be fun."

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**_Thanks for letting me play in the Elmore Leonard/Graham Yost sandbox. :-)_**


	2. Riverbrook

_**S1.02: Riverbrook**_

_**Standard disclaimer: I'm neither Leonard Elmore nor Graham Yost, own nothing and use everything with love and affection. Dialogue from the show is borrowed with the utmost respect for the show's writers.**_

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He left the question unanswered.

It nagged at him throughout the rest of the day, the question and the fact that he hadn't responded. Like the squeak of a ceiling fan you only heard when you finally lay down to sleep, the irritation grew stronger the more attention he paid it.

"_That ever happen to you?"_

Nosy bastard.

Tim sat at the kitchen table in his small apartment and methodically began to take his gun apart, cleaning it as he did every night. Didn't matter that it hadn't been fired or that they'd taken the rifle he _had _fired when he'd killed Dupree. A clean gun could be the difference between life and death.

He snorted into the silence. Dupree. Dumbass. One more notch on his gun barrel. Three more days, mandatory desk duty after firing a weapon. His jaw hardened, the actions of his hands became faster . . . rougher. Riding a desk for doing his fucking job, while they investigated him for doing what they'd goddamn asked him to do. Put someone on the wrong side of his gun sights and more than likely, the sonofabitch was dead.

And for that, he got another three days of desk duty.

Tim stopped, rested the gun parts he held on the table, and took a deep breath. He looked up, out into darkness. The only light in the place he called home came from the fixture that hung above the table. It was late, after midnight. A long day, followed by a long night, capped by the single shot of a rifle.

"_That ever happen to you?"_

He went back to cleaning his sidearm. What was it about stakeouts that turned a car into a fucking confessional?

"_What's the longest you ever had to watch a target?"_

What, like this "one time exotic dancer" was a target? He smiled to himself. He should have expected the questions, especially after he'd admitted being a sniper. People always wanted to hear the stories.

He shook his head as he started to put his gun back together. Not the real stories, though. No, they wanted to hear the John Wayne meets Rambo meets Chuck Norris stories.

The real stories? People couldn't handle those.

"_They told us to come up with stories about ourselves and the target."_

Yea, not those either.

Of course, sometimes the men who lived them couldn't handle those stories either.

" _. . . some folks get so involved in the tales they're telling themselves, they grow to like the target. And when they got the green light, they couldn't pull."_

No, people didn't want to hear the truth behind their fairy tales. They didn't want to know the Pied Piper drowned the village children or that Cinderella's stepsisters cut off their own feet to try to fit into the glass slipper.

"_That ever happen to you?"_

He hadn't answered the question.

He reloaded his weapon, engaged the safety and looked up. His reflection in the window opposite the table stared back at him.

"_That ever happen to you?"_

No. He'd never hesitated.

He'd always pulled.

"_That ever happen to you?"_

It had never happened to him.

Should it have?

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_**As much as I love Raylan and LOVE Boyd Crowder, I heart Tim Gutterson hard. We need more Tim. ** _

_**Thanks for reading!**_


	3. Fixer

**S1.03 "Fixer"**

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She surfaced slowly from sleep, aware first of a damp, muggy breeze wafting in through the open window and then of the weight of a man's arm flung across her hip. For a moment she lay frozen, afraid even to breathe for fear the slight movement might wake her husband. In the next second full awareness returned and she relaxed. The heavy arm, lean and muscular and smooth, didn't belong to Bowman.

He was dead.

She'd killed him.

She was in bed with Raylan Givens.

Ava smiled into shadows that still belonged more to night than early morning. _Well, now,_ she thought._ Ain't this something._

The arm slung over her waist tightened, drawing her back further into the warm curve of his body. She heard an incoherent mumble as Raylan settled deeper into sleep. He shifted slightly and leaned into her, one knee pushing its way between hers.

Heat sizzled along her veins as memory returned. Lord have mercy, but that man knew his way around a bed. Her body ached in places she'd forgotten she had, a pleasant kind of pain that was completely different from the battered way she'd always felt when Bowman finally rolled away after he was done with her.

Ava closed her eyes. _No point in thinking about that anymore_, she scolded herself silently. _You done fixed that mistake, girl - and ruined a good ham while you were at it. Now you got a second chance at making yourself a better life. Don't screw it up._

Raylan's voice from last night echoed in her ears, talking about the places he'd been, telling stories of some of the things he'd done after he left Harlan. Unbidden, she also remembered the look in his eye whenever he mentioned Winona.

_But she ain't the one he's in bed with, is she?_

Ava twisted around and pushed Raylan to his back. His sleepy eyes opened as she lowered herself over him. Still only half awake, his fingers dug into her hips when she started to move.

"Good morning to you, too."

"I'm sorry, sugar," she teased. "Did I wake you up?"

Raylan groaned and arched up into her. "Strangely enough, I don't mind."

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_Thanks for reading!_


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